The Washington Post’s Philip Bump wrote today about a recent Fox News poll suggesting that more and more domestic terrorists Americans are becoming concerned about what their children are being taught in schools.
The network stoked this idea that schools were under threat and that this was important. Americans (heavily Republicans) think it is. Now it's deployed in the Virginia governor's race.https://t.co/2UgzVMpsib
— Philip Bump (@pbump) October 21, 2021
“The network stoked.”
Journo says Fox News coverage made the public care about what's being taught in schools.
So hundreds of millions of people are watching Fox or Fox was just covering a real issue important to people while the MSM bubble mocked. Pretty obvious what happened. pic.twitter.com/xFPTmHJAGH
— Watchdog (@LibWatchdog) October 21, 2021
I'd originally tweeted this in a way that implied criticism of Fox's pollsters, which isn't deserved. So I deleted the tweet.
— Philip Bump (@pbump) October 21, 2021
We appreciate you deleting the tweet, Philip. We really do.
lol he deleted the tweet and they changed the headline pic.twitter.com/iY5y0FhCyy
— Watchdog (@LibWatchdog) October 21, 2021
But you know what we’d also appreciate? A correction — or any sort of acknowledgment, really — in your article that the original intellectually dishonest headline has been changed.
Alas, there’s nothing at the beginning of the article:
Nothing at the end of the article:
And for what it’s worth, the URL still hints at the original headline:
But we get the feeling Philip’s not actually all that sorry about implying criticism of Fox News pollsters, because his article still contains plenty of shots at Fox News:
That it was Fox News polling that elevated the dominance of this concern is fitting. Fox News has also spent a lot more time talking about schools since President Biden was inaugurated. In the spring, that manifested as outrage over “critical race theory,” an academic regimen whose descriptor was co-opted to fill in for the broad overlap of race and education. More recently, the network has amplified the protests at school board meetings that reflected a moderate end of the anger Garland’s memo was highlighting. Often, Fox’s concerned-parent coverage involved interviewing Republican officials who also happened to be parents.
…
The pattern here is actually fairly remarkable. Fox News helped amplify (if not create) a furor at school board meetings several months ago. Over the summer, this had the (intended) effect of establishing a tea-party-like movement from the base up — one that, like the tea party a decade ago, was carefully cultivated and tended. McAuliffe’s comment about parents, which seems fairly obviously not to have been helpful, allowed the right and Fox News to center that frustration on his race in particular. The salience of the issue in Virginia shot up.
…
What kids are being taught in schools, however, lacks prior polling for the sake of comparison. Which makes sense, of course: It’s an issue that was formed from the sheer energy of the culture war more than anything else.
The public schools would’ve gotten away with it, if it weren’t for that damn Fox News brainwashing and lying to all those parents!
How insulting.
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